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UNIVERSITY CONVOCATION 

OF THE STATE OF NEW YOEK. 



THE 



CLASSICS IN EDUCATION: 



By BENJAMIN N. MARTIN, S. T. D. 

PROFESSOR OP LOGIC, AND INTELLECTUAL AND MORAL PHILOSOPHY, IN THE UNIVERSITY 
OF THE CITY OF NEW YORK. 



AN ESSAY 



READ BEFORE THE 



UNIVERSITY CONVOCATION 



STATE OF NEWYOEK, 

AT ITS 

ANNUAL SESSION IN ALBANY, 

AUGUST 6th, 1867. 

By BENJAMIN N. MARTIN, S. T. D, 

PROFESSOR OF LOGIC, AND INTELLECTUAL AND MORAL PHILOSOPHT, 
IN THE UNIVERSITY OF THE CITY OF NEW YORK. 



Published at the request of the Convocation, by the Regents of the 
University of the State of New York. 



ALBANY: 

VAN BENTHUYSEN & SONS' STEAM PRINTING HOUSE. 
1867. 










NEW YORK PUBL. LIBK 
IN EXCHANGE. 



THE CLASSICS IN EDUCATION. 



The study of the two great languages of the world's early 
civilization — so long our only means of intellectual discipline — is 
in our day frequently impugned as unreasonable and unjust. The 
world has advanced so far, Ave are told, in the scientific knowledge 
of nature, that we are no longer in the position in which we were 
when the Latin was the common medium of philosophical discus- 
sion, and the universal language of learned men. Why, then, 
waste our time in acquiring it, instead of passing over at once to 
the study of the great body of modern sciences ? 

A complete answer to this inquiry would require a more full 
exposition of the subject than can be given in the limits of a paper 
like this ; but there are some considerations bearing upon this 
objection, for which a brief hearing may be asked. 

I. In the first place, then, it may be well to inquire how far it is 
really true that the classical tongues have lost, in our day, their 
function of ages to be the vehicle of scientific truth. If the Latin 
is no longer the instrument of scientific research, it is, and it 
ever must be, in connection with its sister tongue, the Greek, the 
storehouse in which are deposited all the results of such research. 
It is at the present day, and it is continually becoming more and 
more, the common language of science, for the designation of all 
its discovered facts in natural history. 

The science of nature is, I need not say, expanding rapidly on 
every side. The number of objects discovered has already become 
very great in every department of nature. The number of known 
plants is not much below 100,000 ; of insects there are supposed 
to be five times as many ; while in every other department of 
nature, among the molluscs, the crustaceans, and the zoophytes, 
those still lower inhabitants of the deep, there are thousands of 
species more. The exploration of distant regions is yet going on; 
and every new explorer adds still many novelties to our catalogue 



of bird, and beast, and fish, and insect, in nearly every quarter of 
the globe. 

Now every one of these newly discovered objects, before its 
discovery can become a fact of science, must have a distinct name. 
Without a very exact method of naming, it would be impossible to 
impart that order and system to our knowledge which constitute 
'science. Indeed, without a Avell settled system of nomenclature, 
this vast multitude of known objects would be but an endless and 
indistinguishable confusion. It is, therefore, regarded as one of 
the great merits of Linnseus — the renowned naturalist of Sweden, 
in the last century — that he gave to the world a system of the most 
exact and simple kind; a nomenclature capable of indefinite exten- 
sion as new objects should be discovered, and applicable to each 
separate branch of Natural History. He aimed to designate every 
known natural object by a compound name, consisting of two 
words, generally descriptive of its characteristic features. We dis- 
tinguish persons in a similar way, by a complex designation, one 
part of which describes the family, and the other the individual. 
We call a man Smith or Taylor, designating thus the family to 
which he belongs ; and we then distinguish him from others of 
that family by his personal name of John or William. So Linnseus 
described objects of natural history, giving to each one a family, 
or generic, name, and adding a designation which distinguishes the 
species from every other of the genus. Thus, when his pupil, 
Kalm, brought to him a multitude of plants, from the then unex- 
plored wilds of our own country, to describe and name, he found 
among them some, of a genus entirely new. To this genus, forming 
a word from the name of the adventurous discoverer, he gave the 
designation of Kalrnia ; and the beautiful species before him, which 
we know so well in our common laurel, with its broad and shining 
leaves, he named from this circumstance broad leaved, or in Latin, 
latifolia. KaLMIA LATIFOUA then, became the permanent and ele- 
gant designation of the species, preserving at once the name of the 
discoverer, and the most striking feature of the plant, through all 
future ages of scientific history. 

This beautiful system, carried out into the description of all the 
groups, wiiler or less wide, which we distinguish in nature, becomes 
a method of classification of very high value; and gives to our know- 
Ledge an orderly arrangement, without which science were impos- 
sible. 



Now it is one of the great features of this system that the names 
are universally expressed in the Latin and Greek languages. The 
name of the genus is generally taken from the latter ; that of the 
species from the former tongue. When, for example, the remark- 
able investigator of the geology of Scotland, whose researches have 
shed such honor upon his country, Hugh Miller, presented to the 
British Association for the Advancement of Science, the strange 
organism which he had discovered in the Old Red Sandstone, and 
demonstrated its character as a fish, Agassiz, who was present, 
was requested by the Association to give a name to the unknown 
and extraordinary creature. Observing its two fins, projecting at 
right angles from its body, like the pinions of a bird, the philoso- 
pher named it at once from that characteristic circumstance ; but 
the name could have had no scientific value if it had been expressed 
only in English. In that' language it would have been unintelli- 
gible to nine-tenths of the scientific world. Hence Agassiz named 
his newly-found wonder in Greek, the common language of science 
for such purposes, the world over. From the two Greek words, 
nrsQov, a wing, and i%0vg 7 a fish, he formed the name Pterichthys, 
the wing-fish ; and by this name the group is henceforth known in 
every land, and by every naturalist, throughout the world. 

The two thousand species of fish which the same great observer 
has recently brought from the Amazon river, will in due time be 
made in like manner accessible to naturalists. Each will have its 
double name, describing at once the genus to which it belongs, 
and the peculiarity which distinguishes it from the other species 
of that genus. These names, too, will be expressed, not in the 
barbarous dialect of the rude Indian tribes within whose limits the 
species were found, nor in the Portuguese of their Christian masters, 
nor in the native French of the great explorer of the valley of the 
Amazon, nor yet in the English of the country which sent forth 
the expedition, but in the languages which are common to science 
in all lands, and which must endure unchanged through all the 
remaining ages of history — names vivid in their descriptive pictur- 
ing, brief for familiar use, equally intelligible in every school of 
science in the world, and pronouncable by every tongue through- 
out the area of civilization. 

Now it is obvious that if all scientific names are in Latin and 
Greek, any person who is to become acquainted with science should 
possess some knowledge of those languages. It may not be an 



intimate and familiar acquaintance, and may not embrace an exact 
and precise knowledge. of the refinements of speech; but some 
knowledge of the vocabulary, particularly of the Latin, is clearly 
indispensable to a student of science. Without it he cannot know 
the meaning of the names he is daily uttering, and cannot write 
them with any certainty that he is accurate; while if he becomes 
himself a discoverer of species he is unable to describe them by 
any suitable names, and must see the honor of naming his own 
discoveries snatched from him by another. If he becomes eminent 
enough to attempt to give instruction by lectures, he must con- 
tinually present himself before his audience in the pitiable position 
of one who knows not the origin, or the explanation, of the names 
he is uttering ; and who fears to commit a blunder in pronuncia- 
tion as often as he opens his lips. A most eminent geologist of 
our own State, who has immortalized himself by bringing to light 
the thousands of fossils of the Silurian deposits of New York, 
experienced the disadvantage of this want of early preparation; 
and was obliged to supply the deficiency by learning the elements 
of Latin and Greek in the maturer years, and amid the active 
investigations of later life, in order to give names to the discoveries 
which he had made. 

Nor is it only the nomenclature of its classification, which these 
languages contribute to science. As investigation advances, facts 
of a deeper kind come to view. Extended analogies begin to be 
observed, for which the common speech has no name ; important 
generalizations are formed which call for accurate expression ; and 
this expression again needs to be made the common possession of 
the scientific men who have to make use of it. It has been ascer- 
tained by Owen, for instance, that the fundamental type of con- 
struction for the whole great group of vertebrate animals, is the 
vertebra ; and a scientific description of this important element 
becomes essential. It is given by the philosophic and learned 
discoverer in the following words : 

" It consists in its typical completeness of the following parts or 
elements: a bod} r , or centrum; two neurapojjhyses, two para- 
popltyses, two pleurapophyses, two hoemapophyses, a neural spine, 
and a haemal spine. These being usually developed from distinct 
and independent centres, I have termed autogenous elements. 
Other parts more properly called ' processes ' which shoot out as 
continuations from some of the preceding elements are termed 



exogenous ; e. g., the diapophyses or ' upper transverse processes/ 
and the zyg apophyses or the ' oblique ' or ' articular ' processes of 
human anatomy." (Lectures on Comparative Anatomy, Part I, 
page 43.) 

It is obvious that the scientific style of our language must, with 
the progress of philosophical views of nature, go more and more 
"to this abstruse and recondite habit of expression. The tendency 
is strikingly exhibited in the writings of the author just quoted; 
who affords certainly the most extraordinary example in our lan- 
guage, and perhaps in any other, of the union of precision with com- 
prehensiveness and breadth. Many sentences might be quoted 
from his writings, remarkable for concise and lucid accuracy of 
statement, which yet, from their free use of those Greek compounds 
which enable the writer to compress into a perfectly definite word 
a whole comprehensive generalization, are almost unintelligible to 
the mere general reader. 

Indeed, it is curious to imagine what would have been the position 
of the scientific world at the present day, without those cultivated 
languages of antiquity to afford the means for the expression of its 
thought, and for the perfection of its systematic nomenclature. 
One is positively frightened to think where we should have been 
by this time, if, by the want of any more generally current medium 
one hundred and fifty years ago, Linnasus had been compelled to 
name his wide and comprehensive enumeration of species in every 
department of nature, in his vernacular Swedish ; Buffon, half a 
century later, to designate his vast array of added species, in his 
native French ; the great English and American explorers of Aus- 
tralia and the Pacific, to name their discoveries in our mother 
tongue ; the more recent and learned naturalists of Germany, to 
describe the results of their profound researches in German gut- 
turals ; the Dutch investigators of Java and Borneo, to employ 
their familiar language of Holland, and the Russian student of 
nature to use his own tongue, so difficult to outsiders, to furnish 
names for the plants of Siberia and the Ural. In such a state of 
things, science would be only another Babel. We should see 
mankind toiling through generations to build the loftiest structure 
that human hands have ever reared, and perpetually baffled by its 
own inevitable reproduction of the original judgment — a confusion 
of tongues. 

It is truly one of the marvels of Divine Providence — for we 



8 

maj 7 be sure it is no accident — that, amid the wide diversities of 
speech in modern Christendom, these two noble languages of anti- 
quit}' should have come down to us as the common heritage of the 
nations; if not to serve for the personal intercourse of scientific 
men, jet to supply to science the descriptive terms of its elegant 
nomenclature, to afford names for the designation of its innumer- 
able species, to furnish the compound words which express its 
wide generalizations, and thus to form its very language through 
the ages of its future development. 

For these reasons a certain knowledge of the classical languages 
has become in our day an indispensable element of scientific educa- 
tion for every student of Natural History. The observer who 
analyzes a flower from the woods, or who makes a collection of 
shells from the beach, or who raises butterflies or moths from the 
cocoon, must, if he or she is ever to gain real possession of any 
one of these departments, or give any scientific value to such 
researches, be imbued with some tincture of classical learning; 
while the student who would even follow, with any true intelli- 
gence, the progress of scientific discussion, will find his way pain- 
fully obstructed without some such attainment. 

II. Another very important aspect of this subject is found in the 
peculiar philological position of the classical tongues. 

1. Together with our own, and with most of the languages of 
modern Europe, they form the great group known as that of the 
Indo-European languages. The members of that family are con- 
nected by many points of identity, which demonstrate their com- 
mon derivation from one original and central stock in the seat of 
the world's earliest civilization. Among all these languages the 
Latin stands forth conspicuous by the singular perfection of its 
grammatical structure. The system of inflections is, in it, carried 
out with a regularity and completeness unknown in any other 
member of the fanaity, unless it be the ancient Sanscrit. It affords, 
therefore, the very best accessible model for the study of philo- 
logy. Whoever would cultivate an acquaintance with the science 
of language in general, will find ampler material for his researches 
here, than perhaps in any other available form of human speech. 

2. If this consideration should seem somewhat far-fetched in 
itself, it is by no means so in its immediate application. 

The Latin language does not stand alone in the world, an 
isolated and disconnected fact. The old speech of Rome is the 



9 

basis of the languages of half the population of Europe ; and 
those, with the single exception (besides our own) of the German, 
by far the most important. It is the basis of the French, so long 
the lano'iiao'e of refinement and taste in books, and of the inter- 
course of all the courts and drawing-rooms, and all the polite soci- 
ety, of Europe. It is still more the foundation of the Italian, the 
earliest in culture and development of the modern tongues, and 
the language of music and the fine arts. It has given character to • 
the Spanish and the Portuguese — the languages of those energetic 
nations which, when emancipated from those Bourbon dynasties 
that learn nothing and forget nothing, will yet vindicate their 
claim to be the children of those who first carried empire literally 
around the globe. 

To all these tongues the Latin stands in the most intimate rela- 
tion, and the mastery of it, is, in great part, the mastery of them. 
The student who is familiar with its grammatical forms, and its 
vocabulary, has learned so much of the structure of the others, 
that we may quote the high authority of Mr. John Stuart Mill, in 
his recent inaugural address, for the assertion that " the possession of 
it makes it easier to learn four or five of the continental languages 
than it would be to learn one of them without it." Surely the 
language which affords the best key to general philology, and 
which renders most of the languages of modern Europe five fold 
easier of acquisition than they would otherwise be, has a claim to 
a prominent place in any general scheme of education. 

3. Still farther, the relation of the Latin tongue to our own, 
commends it as an object worthy of attention. 

It is in great part the basis of our own familiar speech. Not, 
indeed, in the more simple and every day affairs of life is this the 
case, for in this department the Anglo-Saxon supplies those vivid, 
homely and significant forms of expression which give it so much 
of the beauty of simplicity, and of strength. Bnt there is another 
side to our language, and this is almost wholly of Latin origin, 
which embraces all our language of philosophical discussion. All 
our metaphysics, and all our morals, are in expression essentially 
Greek or Roman. If we give utterance to our feelings as matters 
of personal experience, we pour forth our love or our hate, our 
envy or our fear, in the simple Saxon of our childhood ; but the 
moment that we begin to moralize, or to philosophize — that is, to 
reflect, we speak of sensations, emotions, sentiments, passions, 

rB. N. M.] 2 



10 

impulses, and all these words are of Latin origin. The tendency 
to use 1 hese more abstract forms of statement has somewhat declined 
among us since the great authority of Dr. Johnson gave them such 
general currency in the last century ; but no one can become 
familiar with Johnson's precise and weighty st3 T le of speech, without 
being sensible of its extraordinary force. It is not too much to 
say that his writings gave the British public a new view of the 
capabilities of their language ; and that since his day it has been 
general ly written with an exactness, a finish, and a power, of which 
there were very few previous examples in our literature. At pre- 
sent, this side of our English, though not unduly predominant, 
has a very wide acceptance among good writers ; and even those 
who. like Paley for instance, possess a perfect mastery over all the 
simplicities of Saxon speech, feel themselves called, as he did, to a 
frequent use of very elaborate Latin constructions of phrase. 

It is this union of widely different elements in the English tongue 
which forms one of its distinguishing excellencies; and no one can 
acquire the full command of the resources of our vernacular with- 
out a tolerable familiarity with this great source of its strength, — 
save, indeed, as some extraordinary ability may in rare instances 
supply the place of it. 

To the same peculiarities of the Latin as a highly inflected 
language, is due that power of inversion of the parts of a sentence 
which forms so remarkable a feature of the style of the great 
writers of antiquity. As the form of each word indicated its place 
in the sentence, they were enabled to combine words with a free- 
dom of which w y e have scarcely any other example. They studied 
the artistic construction of their sentences with the utmost care ; 
and they carried this element of beauty and effect to a degree not 
attained in any other languages, and Avhich has made their works 
the models for all subsequent ages. This freedom of adjustment 
none of our modern tongues has retained in any similar degree. 
jThe irregular and somewhat lawless style of the English has 
allowed us more of it than most others possess. We can place 
the predicate first, and invert the principal members of the sentence. 
whenever it becomes necessary for the expression of emotion. The 
French language, on the other hand, has, like the other subjects 
of the Emperor, entirely lost its liberty of utterance, and is con- 
lined to a single and invariable order, in which the subject is 
always placed first. The French critics seem rather to glory in 



11 

this peculiarity, as the proper character of a language of pure 
reason. " French Syntax is incorruptible," they say ; no impulse 
of passion may disturb the orderly sequence of thought in that 
tongue. But so long as language shall have for its function the 
full expression of the human heart, so long will it be indispensable 
to find the means of adequately expressing emotion. 

For this purpose the study of the classical authors is our great 
means of discipline. They present to us models of expression 
which are not to be found elsewhere. Indeed, the modern mind 
has passed the point at which it is possible for any similar models 
to be produced. It is rich with varied emotions, comprehensive 
of many forms of thought, and deep in the experience of senti- 
ments, unknown to the ancients; and it has no time to elaborate 
those perfect forms of narration and statement which give such a 
charm to the more narrow and limited elegance of ancient days. 
But while the breadth of our thought, and the depth of our senti- 
ment, so far surpass anything that the ancients knew, their grace- 
ful and beautiful forms of expression must long afford the most 
exquisite models by which to discipline the taste of our richer, 
stronger, and profounder age. 

That these are not merely theoretical advantages may be inferred 
from the fact that a serious practical necessity of such linguistic 
culture is already beginning to be felt, even in quarters which it 
might be supposed would be entirely exempt from it. In the 
departments recently organized, for example, in some of our best 
colleges, for mechanical and scientific studies, there is found to 
exist among the students a great inaptitude, both for the acquisi- 
tion of those modern languages by means of which such studies 
must be prosecuted, and for the ready and effective command of 
the English. So seriously have these difficulties been felt that the 
Scientific Faculty of one of the very highest of these institutions 
(I refer to the scientific school in Yale College), strongly recom- 
mends to all its pupils a preliminary discipline in Latin ; and has 
even been forced to consider the propriety of making such a dis- t 
choline an indispensable qualification for admission to the school. 

Nor are we at liberty in such a general summary to overlook the 
fact, that it is in one of these philosophical and, elegant forms of 
human speech that the Almighty Father has been pleased to embody 
his highest and noblest communications to man. In it He has seen 
fit to record the history and the instructions of the world's great 
LefG. 



12 

Teacher in the way of life, — the death Which forms both the sub- 
limestj and themosl important event in the world's history, through 
all the past, — and the Resurrection, which hoth for each individual 

man, and for the race al large, most illumines and gilds the future. 
Were it in some barbarous jargon that these grand disclosures had 
been embalmed — in some obscure and rude speech, the study of 
which could add nothing to our intellectual wealth, and contribute 
nothing to elegance and refinement — it would still seem both 
ungrateful and unhappy, perhaps also unwise and unsafe, to divorce 
our systems of education from the studies which contain the world's 
great means of moral culture. But how striking on the other hand 
is that providential design which has consigned the teachings of 
Christ to that language which, by the concession of all scholars, is 
certainty, the most philosophical, and perhaps also the most ele- 
gant, of all the forms of human speech ! It seems as though He 
had designed that the reverent study of His great revelation should 
not only imbue the mind with religious knowledge, but impart to 
it also something of the best results of human culture and refine- 
ment. It is certainly not without design that the vehicle of the 
world's religion stands so closely related to its philosophy and its 
science. The education which teaches us God, teaches us also what 
is best and noblest in man ; as the elevation which raises us nearest 
to Heaven, shows us most truly and largely the earth. 

It would seem, then, that the classical languages must ever 
occupy an important place in every institution of enlarged educa- 
tion. They are indispensable to any scientific knowledge of 
nature ; they afford our best preparation for the acquisition of the 
cultivated languages, and of general philology ; they enter largely 
into the constitution of our mother tongue ; they afford us by far 
the best models of style ; they supply our language of taste and 
elegance on the one side, and of philosophy and morals on the 
other; and they embody the spiritual treasures of God's revelation 
to man. In various degrees they mingle themselves with all the recent 
culture, as they stand related to all the early history, of mankind. 
It will always be difficult, but it is at present quite impossible, to 
devise means which could at all supply their place in education. 



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